To be horrified by moves towards self-id

[Geronimoleapinglizards]

I just received a email from the wonderful Writers' Centre, Norwich, saying that submissions are open to people who 'self-identify as working class' for an anthology of writing.

Their aim is laudable in some ways - there are comparatively few working class writers out there and the ones trying to make it often need a helping hand up the ladder.

But self-identifying? Would they really value a woman who went to, say Roedean and then Oxford, applying on the basis that they self-ided as working class because their great, great grandmother was a maid and their parents didn't pay them much pocket money and sometimes made them eat cold baked beans?

We have Labour pushing hard to let any man who self-identifies as female to vie for precious spots on all women's shortlists. We have Women's Aid potentially wanting to let men who self-id as women work in refuges, nevermind the trauma some of their clients will have experienced at the hands of men.

It's great to be who you want to be in life and strive to change things about yourself. But there are certain rigid things about life which can't be changed and although something like the class you belong to is more fluid, it really doesn't help disadvantaged people if certain gates are open to anyone

I have a disability. I would dearly like to identify out of it. I am imprisoned by my own body. I get it; sometimes reality is shit. It's too easy to want to be someone else. But life doesn't work like that. AIBU to think that self-id anything is completely bollocks and detrimental to minority or disadvantaged groups?

But on forms they ask things like "do you identify as disabled?" or "which ethnic group do you feel represents you best ?" etc so it does depend what you mean by self identification?

GeronimoLeaping

as regards Trans-disabled though, from what I have read about it, it is like genuine gender dysphoria- They really believe they were born in the wrong body (a healthy one, in these cases). Some doctors say it is a brain wiring condition, others say it may be a form of Munchausens. Either way, these people are not doing it for the benefits per se (though they may well need or get them if they do succeed in maiming themselves) I also do not see it being a trendy thing that people experiement with like the "genderfluid"" types who are not actually trans but just getting caught up in they hype

I self-identify as European, so when Brexit goes through I have to be allowed to keep my passport, freedom of movement and right to work throughout the EU.

I self-identify as a dog and as such I am exempt from income and council tax. Instead I now demand to have twice daily walks with a lowly human to pick up my faeces and to lick my genitals in public.

I am going to self identify as very underweight so people donate free chocolate cake and reeses cups

Trans-disabled though, from what I have read about it, it is like genuine gender dysphoria

Yes I can understand that. I'm quite sure that's true. It must be very rare, too. But I suppose the point is that if society is moving towards favouring self-id on everything then you are opening the doors to getting chancers and narcissists deciding they want to be certain things simply for the lolz. It's more an issue of, if you're ok with self-id (I'm not saying you are specifically), then hypothetically you're saying it's ok for an able-bodied person to choose to self-identify as disabled simply for the benefits or the attention.

And if the transgender thing tells us anything, it's that you have the group in that population who suffer genuine, crippling dysphoria and then the narcissists/fetishists/general arseholes wants to muscle in and take some of the attention. Plenty of people fetishize disability in some form or another too.

*Self identification makes more sense for social class than for gender

Social class is much harder to define than gender. By income, by profession, by education, by parents profession, etc.

It’s also more fluid in that you might be born working class then by age 40 be considered middle class by most measures. *

I completely agree with all of that. But again if you really look at, say, the proportion of politicians who've been to Eton or those who are single mothers or who grew up on a council estate - you will still find a clear divide between rich and poor, privileged and not so privileged. We're fluid about class, but not that fluid. People might not think it's of huge importance to have writers of working class per se. But maybe with something like politics, most people would see how important it is and suddenly then you do need to be able to define it more urgently and not just rely on self-id. Otherwise things stagnate and you're at risk of only the more privileged getting a voice.

What a lot of crud,

I was born in a working class family, working class area.

I now live in a middle class area and it could be argued that I have many stereotypical middle class attitudes and certainly from appearance I probably look middle class etc.

I still think I'm a working class girl at heart, but it would be utterly unfair of me to 'identify' as working class in order to gain a position for people who are working class. Honestly, it's so insulting and patronising and I would deserve to be utterly derided for it.

A pile of hot steaming wankdom. I fucking hate identity politics

This is bloody insulting. I come from a very poor working class background as do my parents and grandparents. When I see the struggles they had and lack of choices, it makes me angry. I also had no choices growing up because of my class, accent, background etc. They have had all the privilege of a middle/upper class background. Classism does exist still and to think someone can just seldom identify as working class because its cool is ridiculous. Also, don't get me started on the whole trans NONSENSE.FGS, I even saw a white man on TV the other month, who self ID as a Phillip in woman?????

Filipino woman even

Im going to self identify as being from Mars.

I still think of myself as working class, but I'm not. I live in a big house, good money and my son is resolutely middle class, which I'm glad about. I would never seldom ID as working class now. I would simply say I grew up poor on benefits, with a mentally ill father and mother. Which was pretty grim.

How on earth are they going to assess who is eligible to enter the competition? And surely self identifying as something means that you are not actually that thing in reality. You identify with something because you are not it but would like to be.

Some people talk such bollocks. This is ridiculous. I'd love to say something like meanwhile in the real world. But then realise this is the real world and it just makes me dispair.

Are we all familiar with Chloe Jennings-White?

Chloe was born with a penis. He thinks he's a woman.

He was also born able bodied and feels disabled inside.

He hasn't yet decided that he's Chinese.

I don't know why his fantasy that he is a woman is given house-room, but his fantasy that he is disabled isn't. AFAIC both perceptions are delusions.

The awful thing is that some people have such terrible dysphoria that they are absolutely determined to injure themselves so that they can really have the disability they feel inside they are supposed to have. It's difficult to know what to do about those; someone who is determined to cut his own arm off if a doctor won't do it for him, must be a real ethical dilemma for doctors to deal with.